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HUNDREDS of people who dress alternatively will take to the streets to express their right to wear and look how they choose.

Alicia Thompson, of Sheffield, is organising a march in her own city on 31 August because of what happened to Sophie Lancaster, from Bacup.

She said: ‘What happened to Sophie was really the straw that broke the camel’s back. Everybody I know fell into a depression when it happened.

‘We all know what it is like to be picked upon because you dress differently, we are shouted at and abused in the street and some people have been physically attacked.

‘We are calling the march Seen and Not Heard – a parade of united souls.’

Alicia, 31, who has two children Teri-Ann, 11, and Kira-Li, seven, and is stepmother to Brandon, nine, and seven-year-old Kai, said: ‘Even when I have been in my jeans taking my children somewhere I am abused because I have pink hair. People who are alternative have been suffering in silence for a long time, because people have not reported incidents then it has carried on and carried on until what happened with Sophie and that has brought it to everyone’s attention.’

Similar events will take place in Plymouth, Newcastle and Ipswich, a 16-year-old in Ireland is organising her own event and another will be in South Africa.

Alicia said: ‘Through my MySpace site I have spoken to thousands of people like myself who are alternative and every single one of them has been abused or beaten up. I went to speak to young people in the Peace Garden in Sheffield and this young girl of about 13 was sitting there. She was beautiful, but she showed me a patch of her head where children at school had burned her hair, because she was different.’